Jaded
by Roux
Summary: [BookMovieVerse] After Mort's death, a confused Amy tries to cope, or, rather, to understand, and discovers just how haunting the past can be.
1. 1

Okay.  
  
This is a book fiction. It will have elements of the movie in it, but not many, save for the fact that Mort and Amy lost their baby.  
  
In the book, Mort dies. Amy and Ted do not. Amy is depressed.  
  
And John Shooter is real.  
  
  


*~*~*

**_1_**  
  
  
Mort was dead.  
  
Amy still couldn't believe it.  
  
Mort was dead.  
  
Ted had told her time and time again that he was never coming back, and Amy had said she believed him, but she knew now, as she lay in bed next to her now-fiancé, that she would never truly accept it.  
  
She would never bring him coffee in the morning, would never groan at his stupid blonde jokes, would never make him breakfast; would never get up with him at six in the morning to go on a walk, would never spot him for a bagel at the café, would never pry the bottle of Jack Daniel's from his fingers as he dozed in front of the word processor and escort him to bed, never ever again.   
  
She would never make love to him ever again, either.  
  
This bothered Amy.  
  
Never make **love** to him ever again.  
  
When was the last time they had made love? When they were still married? It had to have been at least a year before their divorce, before Amy had realized (thought) she was second place in Mort's life and went out to a singles bar where she met Ted.  
  
A pang of guilt coursed through her veins at this thought.  
  
Ted.  
  
If it hadn't been for Ted, everything would be different. Amy would have probably swallowed her cowardice down and confronted Mort, and they would have sat down on the couch or bed and talked into the early hours of the morning when both would have realized how much they were still in love with each other, and they would have cried and hugged each other, never to let go, and then one would kiss the other and superfluous clothing would have gone flying in every direction and then it would be arching backs and loud moans and hot kisses, echoing through their house.  
  
Their house.  
  
If it hadn't been for Ted, their house would probably still be standing; that gorgeous Victorian house that they had both fallen in love with while driving around in Suburban Maine, the one that Amy had begged Mort to ask the then-owner for a tour; the house that they'd contentedly shared for just over a decade; the house that they'd painted and furnished themselves; the house in which every room they'd consummated with a long, slow screwing session; the house that they were going to raise their baby in; the house that they'd grieved in when the baby was lost; the house with her study, her secret window tucked in behind a wall; the house whose charred remains she and Mort and Ted had waded through, silent and shocked and sad.  
  
Ted.  
  
If it hadn't been for Ted, there would have been no divorce, no haggling with Ted to 'tell Mort later', no calling Mort incessantly to get him to sign the papers and make the separation final.  
  
If it hadn't been for Ted, there would be a Mort.  
  
This hit Amy like a frying pan hits a cartoon character.  
  
No Ted meant Living Mort.  
  
Amy suddenly hated Ted, hated him with all her heart. She suddenly hated his graying brown hair that swept over to the side in a wave, hated his Ford Taurus that had his picture, name and number painted on the side, hated his goddam pipe that he chewed on all the time, hated the smell of his tobacco, hated the way he spoke, that southern molasses drawl that was too much like John Shooter's, hated the way he had treated Mort, hated his kind, worried attitude following Mort's death.  
  
If it hadn't been for that goddam affair, if Amy hadn't liked Ted so much, if Ted hadn't been so fucking **likeable**, **Mort** would still be **alive**.  
  
Amy considered, for a moment, taking the gun from the desk in the study and using it to put a dark, smoking hole in Ted's forehead, almost like Mort had done that awful night at the motel.  
  
For a second, she couldn't blame Mort for nearly pulling the trigger. She may have in his place. May have…  
  
She couldn't quite remember that night; her subconscious had blocked it out, as had done the two men's, and everything was muzzy, as if seen through nylon and heard through one of Mort's flannel shirts.  
  
She remembered being scared. Scared and incredibly guilty.   
  
And worried.  
  
Oh, how worried she had been about Mort.  
  
Amy had known something was wrong, had known that Mort was on his last leg, and that his discovering their affair was the straw that broke the camel's back.   
  
But she didn't know, at the same time. She would never really know.  
  
A deep surge of black hate towards Ted coursed through her again, rippled through her like a wake following a ship.  
  
You stupid fucking  bastard! she screamed at Ted silently, this is all your fault!  
  
And she slipped out of bed in a flash and pattered down the hallway to the study like some jaded James Bond in a black nightie, removing the .35 from the bottom right-hand drawer, then pattering back.  
  
As she entered the master bedroom, she slowly lifted the pistol and pointed it at the smudged black form that was Ted, her hand shaking as she pulled the hammer back, locking it. She moved forward, closer to her sleeping lover, still keeping the gun trained on his lump of a head, and her finger began to squeeze that sliver of steel, and it pulled—  
  
She dropped the gun to the floor.  
  
No loud rapport. No sweetly acrid smoke. No smug trickle of Ferrari red dripping down onto the clean, obscenely white sheets.  
  
Only a woman in her black nightie, wrapped around herself as she lay on the braided rug, trickles of salty tears running down her face as silent sobs wracked her body.  
  
Ted slept on.


	2. 2

**_2_**

Ted was at work.  
  
Ted was at work, and Amy was sifting through a box of Mort's stuff.  
  
It was hard, seeing all of Mort's things, but no Mort.  
  
And nearly everything had a memory to go along with it, like the day Mort had bought that black felt Amish hat at a rummage sale.   
  
"I look like a man who belongs out on the north forty, walking plow-furrows behind a mule's ass."  
  
She had smiled and lovingly pulled the brim down over his eyes.  
  
That was a memory.  
  
**So,**came the voice, **was John Shooter.**  
  
Amy gave an involuntary shudder, her calf throbbing for a moment, and she swiftly thought of something else.  
  
She found a small box inside a bigger box labeled **MortnAmy**, one that was covered in fingerprints (recent by the looks of them) and grime and remnants of a red water-based Crayola pen. Amy blew the excess dust off from the top of the box, then wedged her fingers between the box and its lid. She had to tug and shake the box a bit to get the lid to loosen, the contents rattling thickly inside, and finally the bottom fell from out of the clutches of the possessive top.  
  
A square, black thing bounced out of the now-lidless box, hitting the floor with a clunk. Amy bent towards it, curious, and reached out, grabbing the hunk of plastic.  
  
She saw the label, and her vision blurred and darkened.  
  
**Our Wedding****  
**  
  
*~*~*  
  
  
Lunch that day was not a pleasant event.  
  
Amy fixed herself a peanut butter sandwich, a glass of peach iced tea, got herself a paper plate and a napkin and tried not to look at the videotape lying facedown in the corner where she'd thrown it. It had bounced off the wall, and Amy had had to duck a slice of black plastic as it broke off and shot in her direction. That bit was still on the floor, where it had landed.  
  
Amy wasn't sure about it. The tape. Did she want to touch it? Should she let it lie there and cover it up with a rug? What should she do? What should she think?  
  
It had been a strange thing, four months earlier, after Mort had moved out, when she couldn't find the tape, and she had thought of calling him up at Tashmore Lake, to ask him if he'd seen it, but just as she picked up the receiver she got one of her feelings.  
  
This was a bad idea. Bad karma, bad chi.  
  
Her heart still ached at the thought of Mort's reaction that goddam horrible night, his face, that sadangryhorrified look in his eyes as he drank in the scene. They had been naked, their limbs twisted up in sheets. Their shoulders were touching.  
  
Then there was screaming, confusion, and then the staring contest against the barrel of a gun.  
  
Amy had replaced the receiver.  
  
Now all she could do was wonder. Now there was no Mort to almost call, and then not call due to fear and guilt and utter misery.  
  
Amy wondered if Mort had ever watched the tape, perhaps at three 'o clock in the morning with a whiskey and a peanut butter sandwich off of a paper plate, napkin at his side, the food too thick in his mouth as he watched himself hold her close, his nose nuzzling her hair as her own was buried in his lapel, her fingers stroking the back of his neck as his danced over her hips. Amy wondered if his eyes had blurred as they kissed softly, sweetly, and if Mort had told Bump that the tears were a result of his taking too big a bite so that it was hard to swallow.  
  
Why were men so utterly stupid when it came to admitting feelings?  
  
Amy found it hard to swallow herself, and blamed it on the peanut butter.


	3. 3

3  
  
As Amy attempted to choke down the rest of her lunch she dwelled on all the possibilities why the tape made her so nervous.  
  
One idea had been that she was simply being paranoid and that she needed to stop being so neurotic.  
  
Another was that perhaps her continuous lack of sleep during these last few months was getting to her.  
  
The one that was the most likely, however, was that on the tape, Mort was still alive.  
  
It was strange to think that in Derry, Maine, United States of America, Earth, The Milky Way, Universe, Mort no longer physically existed, but in that little hollow box on a spool of recycled material Mort laughed and danced and told jokes without a care in the world save for her.  
  
That thought, too, was painful, and the ache settled itself just above her stomach and below her breasts, making it difficult to breathe.  
  
After the separation Amy still cared for Mort, and knew she always will, but the way she felt now was never like the way she had felt when talking to Mort on the phone, or the odd time they saw each other at legal meeting or when he came to pick up some of his things.  
  
The twinge of emotion, though, had grown during the whole Shooter ordeal right along with her anxiety for her ex-husband. The night she had called Mort, the last time she would talk, really talk to him, Amy had been extremely confused.


	4. 4

**4****  
**  
**Two Months Earlier****  
**  
Ted had left around seven, just after the darkness of six in the morning had gone and the early fog was burned off by a steadily warming sun. Amy had woken with the digital alarm clock at around five forty-five, had turned her head for the ritualistic good morning peck-on-the-cheek, then hovered about comfortably in that place between sleep and awake, half-listening to Ted as he sang 'The Honeymoon Song' in the shower and shoving the covers over her head to drown out his blow-dryer. Amy pulled them back down later to smack her lips against Ted's as he said 'see you later', and dozed a bit more, feeling the tiny tremors the automatic garage door made as it closed, buzzing pleasantly through her skin.  
  
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and though Amy would much rather have blundered on through life oblivious, something began to nag at her.  
  
Ted had been singing 'The Honeymoon Song'.  
  
Mort had hummed that the morning they'd woken up together for the firt time, sleepy, calm, and satisfied.  
  
Amy had been pillowed on Mort's golden, naked chest, listening to his heart beat, the muscles in her arm tightening as a hand trailed a finger with a touch that was there and not there up and down her arm.  
  
Then Mort began to thrum, and Amy had lifted her head from his breast to look at him oddly.  
  
"Why 'The Honeymoon Song'?"  
  
Mort just grinned and slipped a hand behind her neck to bring her in for a kiss. Amy had struggled, giggling and dodging his mouth, squealing about morning breath, but Mort had captured her and pinned her to the mattress and proceeded to kiss her until she couldn't care less about the way his mouth tasted. When he'd finally pulled away, thickening against her thigh, Amy had laughed.  
  
"At least you woke up with 'The Honeymoon Song' in your head and not something like 'The Anvil Chorus'."  
  
Mort had snickered and began to kiss down her body, and then there was warmth and wet and Mort and sunlight and Mort and Mort inside and around her, and Amy had spread her legs and arched her back, and rocked against the lapping presence between her thighs, seeing stars even though they had disappeared into the sky hours before.  
  
Amy had awoken back in Ted's house as if from a dream, and realized with a half-annoyed, half-aroused moan that her legs had drawn themselves up of their own accord, and a warm slickness dampened the apex of her thighs. She'd had half a mind to relieve the pleasurable ache herself, but as her hand slid down beneath the sheets and fingered the band of her Victoria's Secret panties, she'd instantaneously felt nauseous.  
  
This was wrong.  
  
There was no possible legitimate excuse for feeling what she did at that moment. There was no way in Hell that she should still be so turned on when thinking of Mort; they were in the Middle of a divorce (D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Dee-vorce), and Ted! She loved Ted! She **wanted** Ted, not Mort!  
  
But again the small voice had protested by saying then why do you care? Why do you feel some surge of happiness when Mort answers the phone, even if he's in a foul mood? Why do you worry about him constantly? And I know that you know that we both know you still have a soft spot for him.  
  
Amy denied this, denied herself.  
  
Then she had picked up the portable resting on the end-table, had dialed the Tashmore Lake number, and waited for Mort to answer the phone, not knowing that Morton Rainey would soon depart this world, and that John Shooter would run it.


End file.
